


Bleeding Glass and Healing Needles

by writerkenna



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Abortion, Angst, Fluff and Angst, Future Fic, Minor depiction of Abortion, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-03 11:15:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24470092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writerkenna/pseuds/writerkenna
Summary: Britta is forty-two. She should be past the point in her life of worrying about her boyfriend getting her pregnant. Yet, here she is.
Relationships: Annie Edison/Jeff Winger, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Troy Barnes/Britta Perry
Comments: 9
Kudos: 52





	Bleeding Glass and Healing Needles

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by me watching the Jenny Slate movie Obvious Child as well reading the fact that 1 in 3 women will have an abortion at some point in their lives, and being, like, hey, there are hardly any good stories about the process of abortion. So I wrote one that I feel could realistically happen for Britta and Troy. This piece is quite emotionally heavy, and does feature a very vague description of an abortion happening, so please be aware of that, as it might be triggering.  
> Also, the title comes from a Natalie is Freezing lyric.  
> This fic was immensely cathartic and rewarding to write, and I hope some of that can be translated into reading it. Enjoy

It’s the week after Sebastian’s fifth birthday party, which had been a disaster of children, Shirley’s moody teenagers, and Annie’s aggressive form of party planning (theme for this year: Puppy Party, complete with a living, slobbering present in accordance), when Britta does some math and figures out her period is way late. 

She’s got a cycle tracking app on her phone but the notifications are turned off, so it’s not until she opens the app to log her weight that she sees her calendar telling her she should have already been over and done with her period. She counts the days for herself, two, three, four times over, and, yeah, she’s late. 

Britta tells herself that she is lacking proper information to freak out yet. She, with the wealth of problem management skills she has in her arsenal, spends two days hulled up in her apartment watching Real Housewives and noting its abuses of feminism while eating order-in vegan Thai before dealing with anything. After two days, she buys a pregnancy test and takes it in the bathroom of the Walgreens. 

The unfairness of it all is palpable. Britta is forty-two. Forty-fucking-two. She’s well-aware of that number, slammed with it by her most recent birthday and having it written by Shirley in swirly red frosting on her birthday cake. It doesn’t mean much, being that age. Doesn’t mean she’s going to have a better job than working in a bar and occasional volunteer work, doesn’t mean a non-shitty apartment or enough money to save or even increased wisdom. But, she does think it should mean not having to deal with unplanned, unwanted, and certainly unexpected pregnancies. Again, totally unfair. 

Maybe it’s on her. She has gotten less careful with her birth control as she’s gotten older. But, in that case, it’s on Troy, too. He never wears condoms. And this whole . . . deal . . . is definitely Troy’s. Britta has had only three or so fully realised sexaul encounters with people other than Troy in the five years they’ve been doing this on and off, casual, whateverness together.

Britta will call him about this tomorrow. Or, um, soon. Eventually. Maybe some more days with reality TV trash first. 

The choice of when to tell Troy is made for her when he’s at her door on a Saturday as she’s coming home after a six to midnight shift at the bar. She’s deliriously hungry, wanting greasy eggs and her favorite tofu bacon, but also exhausted and sort of nauseous, so seeing Troy waiting up for her is a fever dream for half a second. 

“Oh, er, hey there,” Britta stumble-laughs. Troy pulls a tight smile. 

“I haven’t heard from you in a while,” he says and she can feel him trying to say this like he doesn’t really care, despite the fact he’s at her door at 12:20 am. They both like to pretend that they’re not the type of couple (are they a couple?) who need to check up on each other, but the reality is they call or text or see each other more days than not. 

“Sorry, I’ve been really busy. New, um, bee population study at the greenhouses this week,” Britta excuses and is grateful that Troy doesn’t retain any information about what she actually does at the environmental conserve she volunteers at. She’ll give him the real reason soon enough, though. He’s here. She better get it done with, “Come in?”

Troy nods and stands by as Britta unlocks her door, then her padlock (it’s not a great neighborhood). He takes a seat in her well-loved blue couch and she hangs back, observing him. Her head echoes a chorus of  _ say it, just fucking say it Britta, c’mon, say it _ , but her mouth won’t move.

“Want a drink?” Britta asks when she gets herself to speak. That had been a blatant ‘I’m pregnant’ in her brain, but it caught somewhere in her throat and didn’t make it out. 

“Yeah, a beer sounds good. Just one, though. I’m not staying over.”

“Coming right up!” Britta says, dipping into her customer service voice and making Troy snort a laugh. She shakes out her shoulders and turns toward the kitchen. She wonders if he’ll stay over once she tells him. She wonders if she wants that. She probably does, but admitting that even to herself feels like a confirmation of the dependence on other people she’s been fighting her whole life. 

Britta gets Troy an IPA from the fridge and presents it to him cracked open and ready. He takes it with a grin. 

“Thanks.”

“I’m pregnant.”

Britta gulps. She hadn’t meant it to be so abrupt. Actually, she hadn’t meant to say that, right then and there, at all. It had come straight from her gut, no stops to her brain, probably on delay from earlier. Troy freezes, his arm extended and still as he grips hard onto his beer, and stares up at Britta with emotionless, giant eyes.

“Ha. Um, wait, sorry, what?”

“I’m . . . pregnant? With your fetus?” Britta meanders, her mouth a straight taut line. 

“Ew, Britta, don’t call it a . . . a fetus. Gross,” Troy groans. He moves his arm down and sets his drink on the side table as the skin between his eyes scrunches at their closing. Britta compiles a response on why fetus is the right term for it medically, at this point, and that assigning it other names, such as ‘baby’ or ‘their child’, adds a level of emotionality that makes decision making harder. She leaves it unsaid, as it’s too harsh on him after she’s just revealed her pregnancy, and sits at the other end of the couch from him.

“Sorry,” she mumbles into the palm clutching her face as she tracks Troy. He’s not looking at her, but she can see from his side profile, the quirking up and down of his brows and his lip twitching with unvoiced words, that he is thinking through all the ways this could go. She’s gone the other direction, thinking of none of the future and what she’ll,  _ they’ll _ , do and instead focusing on the past, on the day she found out Annie was pregnant for the first time. 

Annie was so sure right from the start of being a mother. She had this glow around her the whole lunch. Jeff did, too, in his own Jeff way. They were so alight with what they were about to do, a journey which Britta would and does consider fucking terrifying, and had come in with name ideas, plans to turn the guest bedroom into a nursery, and a confidence in themselves of taking this on Britta had balked at. She couldn’t ever imagine, whatever the scenario of the conception, being that happy and certain of becoming a parent. Though, Annie was already over three and a half months along when they told the study group, maybe the certainty comes on later. 

“What do you wanna do?” Troy asks and Britta shakes herself out of her own head. She’s unsure of what to tell him, because she has come to zero conclusions. 

“I really don’t know,” Britta confesses. Honesty is likely the best policy right now, leads to the least confusion for both of them. Troy nods his head slowly, arms on his knees and hands both up around his mouth.

“Well, sleep on it, then?” he asks with a weak grin, the mask of an internal freakout, and she agrees, so exhausted, so ready for bed, “I can stay over if you want.”

“Whatever works,” Britta mutters, against her own interests because she does really want him around, especially tonight. 

“Alright, cool,” Troys says as he straightens up off the couch with a hefty inhale and heads to the bedroom. Britta is grateful he’s become so experienced in her mixed signals as to know what she really wants. 

She’s still starving from work, so she heats up leftover quinoa casserole and eats it in bed in flannel pants and her stretched out  _ HUG A TREE TODAY  _ t-shirt. 

“I wanna say, if we have this kid, we are not raising them Jehovah’s Witness, okay?” Britta insists, pointing with a forkful of quinoa and trying out the idea of going through with this experimentally and seeing how it feels on her tongue. Odd, mostly, like someone else’s words out of her mouth. 

“No, yeah, definitely. Growing up Jehovah’s Witness is weird. I kept forgetting how old I was with no birthday parties. Also, I figured you wanna pass your atheism on.” 

“No doi. The whole religion thing is a load of crap . . . Don’t tell Shirley,” Britta agrees, mumbling about Shirley as an afterthought. She sometimes feels guilty about how affected Shirley gets about her anti-religious leanings, but Shirley also still donates to Prenatal Patriots, so maybe she shouldn’t. 

“You could move in with me once it’s born. I have the space. We could make the game room into a baby/game room,” Troy says, shockingly chill given that they’re talking about an eighteen year plus time commitment with each other here. That’s the biggest change Britta’s felt in him since he came back from his boating; his new ability at staying calm and collected through the crashes and bumps of the group’s lives, his signature freak outs gone with his youth. It’s amazingly helpful in her own rocky roads. 

And, yeah, it’s true his apartment is gigantic. Penthouse is more fitting than apartment, really. Troy lives there off the money he got from Pierce and doesn’t have to worry about securing an income to maintain his dwelling like Britta does. He does pick up odd jobs here and there; waiting tables or working in daycares and zoos and amusement parks for the sake of hijinks with Abed, which, in his mid-thirties, Britta finds ridiculously childish. Although, he also does a great deal of charity work in the impoverished coastal nations he stopped at during his travels. That she finds admirable. 

“Okay, Mr. Big Rich Man. I’ll just drop my whole life and my apartment and my job and come be your kept woman. I bet you already have my apron picked out. Try again, male overlord,” Britta snaps, mostly to make him reconsider where his sense of male nobility at her pregnancy is coming from, but also to deter herself from the sort of attractive idea of playing house with Troy and leaving behind a life of poverty. She won’t. She can’t just be his housewife, no matter the appeals of it. It’s fundamentally not her. 

“Shit, Britta, sorry I asked. And I never said you’d have to give up your job. If anything, I’d quit my job, if I had one then,” Troy says, staring her down with a furrowed brow, and her mouth twitches between a scowl and a smile, “I guess we’d just do shared custody at both places, then, huh?”

“Yeah, we’d do that,” Britta mumbles. She’s watching him as he watches her, and she can tell they’re both waiting for the other to start panicking. Strangely, with him here, she’s keeping a relative cool, “We are being disarmingly cavalier about this all.”

“The freak-out is coming, I think. Maybe tomorrow morning,” Troy says, and then they are both laughing as hard as the oddity of this situation demands. The laughter fades and they are both laying back on the pillows, his beer and her tupperware on the nightstand, and staring at each other with a sense of melancholy dread barely starting to edge in on them. This conversation, this idea of swapping their non-religious baby between houses and being casual sex-having non-married co-parents, is not real. They are day-dreaming of this idyllic life that she’s not entirely sure she’d even like. They both know it, or at least, Britta knows she knows it; that this is way more complicated and way more up in the air than they are admitting. She sighs, her face heavy, and lays herself on his bare chest.

“Okay, I’m fucking tired. Put on something stupid I can fall asleep to.”

“I know just the thing,” Troy says with a grin as he toggles to her Netflix (well, his account he pays for on her TV) and starts typing in Adam Sandler. Britta burrows further into his chest and doesn’t think anymore for the night. Tomorrow. Everything will wait until tomorrow. 

Troy’s smell is what she wakes up to, rich and definitively him. It’s Britta’s secret favorite thing, his smell. He smells the same as he did when they first met, and she loves it the same, if not more by this point. She takes one big inhale of him before sitting up and stretching out of bed. Troy flops over onto his stomach, persistently still asleep. She smiles at him and how sweet he looks before she heads out the room and into the kitchen. 

Britta sighs as she sets out two bowls for cereal. It’s the next day, and she told herself she’d think about things. A whole assortment of things. 

Her first thought is again her age. She’s been starting to feel old for the first time in her life, her late night shifts getting harder to manage and her aches and pains on a steady uptick. The idea of taking on a newborn overwhelms her, in terms of the energy it requires, and she’s not sure she’d be able to keep up. Not to mention, she’ll be sixty by the time the kid’s eighteen, which is bound to garner some judgement, maybe even resentment from the kid themself. The part that grinds her gears is the double standard for old moms and old dads. Jeff was forty-five when he had his first kid, forty-seven with his second. He’s fifty now, and Britta is sure she’ll hear the announcement for baby three any day. No one bats an eye at that, no one would tell Jeff that he’s depriving his kid of something, and he doesn’t have to worry about baby related health problems just because of his age. Britta considers having it as a means of proving that women in their forties are just as great of moms as anyone else and spearheading the new feminist campagin for old mothers, but that’s a stupid reason to have a kid. 

She has a few better reasons, though. Like how cute a baby with Troy’s genes would be, or how she’d have someone who would love her without conditions, or how it would finally make her feel as though she’d done something to make her adult life worthwhile. Britta has those reasons, and she has Troy with them, and they are both pretty compelling. But, she knows they’re not enough. 

She finishes up getting together the cereal, which is the only breakfast food she has in her pantry, and pours herself a glass of water. It reflects back to her the apartment, which is too small, which is made only for her and her cats, which she struggles to afford, and she feels like her decision is made then and there. 

Britta settles on the couch and sets the two cereal bowls out on the coffee table as she waits for Troy to wake up. Her calico cat, Mimi, the oldest and most set in her ways of her cats, climbs up next to her and settles her head on Britta’s thigh. 

“You and me against the world, huh?” Britta whispers, scratching at the side of the cat’s chin. Her eyes shut in appreciation and Britta supposes this is enough for her, to know she can make her cats happy and make informed, responsible choices about her surprise pregnancies. 

“Heyyyy,” Troy yawns out into the room. He slumps down next to her and goes right to shoveling cereal into his mouth. Mimi huffs and rises at his presence (she doesn’t like anyone but Britta) and jumps to the floor. Britta shoots her an apologetic look but she trots off without a glance back. Britta sighs and turns to Troy.

She’s considering how she’ll tell him she wants an abortion. She doesn’t think he’ll be mad, but maybe he will. He’s thirty-five, he’s got money, this could be his prime spawn producing time. Well, whatever he says, she’s going to do this. Alone, if she has to.

“You okay?” Troy asks after his greeting goes unacknowledged. Britta presses her lips together and brings one of his hands between her own. His brow quirks at the gesture.

“Troy, I . . .” Britta stops, her chest getting unbearably heavy as she tightens her grip on Troy’s palm. Troys stares at her expectantly, “I think that I want to terminate.”

Troy is silent, though he hasn’t moved his hand. He’s not frowning, really, but his face is tight in a way that makes Britta tense. 

“Okay,” Troy says and his eyes have strayed from her to the floor. Britta balks, expecting great relief or a big blowout of anger or some of his signature Troy Barnes tears or anything in reaction to her news. She yanks her hands back.

“Okay? Your . . . you can’t just say okay!” she yells. Troy grimaces and he huffs himself away from her, crossing his arms and tucking his legs up on the couch.

“Yeah, it’s like . . . What do you want me to say? ”

“I want you to have an actual reaction to this. It’s a major life choice! If you’re feeling grief, or joy, or confusion, we can talk that out, okay? I know how to work with that. But you have to feel something. What do you feel, Troy? What do you-”

“I don’t know! I . . . I don’t know how I-”

“Then let’s talk about it!” Britta pushes, her hands slamming down onto Troy’s knee. Her heart is pounding and suddenly she is boiling with anger. How can he not care about this? Even if not for her, she thinks he should at least take the responsibility to have an opinion on a situation partly his doing. He’s acting like such a kid, which is cute only some of the time. Troy shrugs his shoulders and looks over to Britta with heavy eyes. 

“I . . . whatever you want to do, Britta, we can do. I just want us to make the choice you want, the choice that will make you feel the best in the long run. That’s how I feel. I want you happy. That okay?”

Britta wells up, and, yes, that will be alright. His voice was so soft, felt like an auditory hug wrapped around her worry. She hates that she pushed him, for he looks overworked by it. She runs her hand slow and firm down his arm as she nods and he smiles to it. 

“I, um,” Britta starts, thinking she might cry and having no clue why. Troy’s voice saying ‘I want you happy’ is still hitting her hard in a way she hadn’t expected to be hit, “I don’t have insurance.” 

Troy blows out a laugh and shakes his head. He’s staring forward at her wall, legs still crossed under him, as he brings Britta’s hand up to his lips and kisses the back of her palm.

“I’ll pay. Obviously,” he says and his eyes flick over to her, “unless that makes me a male pig or whatever. I don’t know the feminist stuff to do here.”

Britta leans over with a snort and encircles Troy’s shoulders in her arms. She works her way into the crevice of his neck and inhales that wonderful Troy smell again. He’s too sweet for her. Through it all, he’s managed to stay so sweet. 

“It’s fine. You can pay,” she concedes. 

The whole process is more manageable than she thought it would be. Britta calls around to a few clinics and finds the closest place she can get a termination procedure is a Planned Parenthood in Denver. It’s about an hour drive, more with traffic, but nothing too bad. She feels lucky to be in Colorado, as it’s much harder in some other places. 

“First day of your last menstrual cycle?” the receptionist at PP Denver asks Britta during their scheduling phone call, already having made their way through the scripted review of Britta’s options and the advice to take some time to think this over. Britta scrambles to open her tracking app, as she has no idea.

“Uhhh, February 10th,” she replies after a large moment. She hears muffled key clacking on the other side of the line.

“Okay, hon, you’re 10 weeks and 4 days along. We will need to do an in clinic surgical abortion,” the woman drawls. Britta gulps at the idea of ten weeks of being pregnant. For her and her own knowledge, it’s only been a week of living with this other enigma in her belly, and the concept of this thing having been cohabiting with her for nearly three months makes her choice to terminate harder to grapple with. Britta pushes this aside as internalized pro-life dogma and continues on with the matter at hand.

“Sorry, you said surgery?” she asks tightly.

“Oh, no, sweetheart. That’s just what it’s called, but it’s not really much of a surgery. You won’t even be put under, only on a sedative. It’s all over and done in less than a half hour.”

“Okay, that’s …” Britta mumbles, not sure if the receptionist’s drippingly sweet tone is a comfort or simply condescending, “Alright, um, when is the soonest I could come in?”

She’s nervous now, from the idea of surgery, even if it’s not really surgery. The last major medical procedure she had done was getting her wisdom teeth out at eighteen, right before she moved to New York. The anesthetic made her nauseous for days after. She hated it.

“Let’s see … we can do … a week from today, next Monday, at 11 am. Is that good for you?”

“Yeah,” Britta says. Monday’s are her days off from both the bar and the conserve, so no excuses to anyone, thankfully. The receptionist gets her registered in the system, tells her to bring a friend to drive her home after and to drink plenty of water the morning off, and then, there it is, like that, set for next week.

Troy comes to pick her up in his car on Monday at 9 am, planning on being too early rather than too late. The drive is mostly silent with the exception of the peppy playlist Troy is playing off his phone, presumably to keep the mood up. Britta admires him for the effort. She spends the trip watching the world speed by out her window and staying in a middling point of wanting to cry and forcing herself not to.

“So, um, you . . . ready, or, like, excited? Sorry, not excited, I . . . I don’t know what I’m doing,” Troy mutters as they park outside the clinic. Britta breaks out of her own head with half a laugh.

“Uh, wouldn’t say excited, exactly, but I’m alright. And . . . yeah, ready, I guess,” Britta sighs, smoothing her palms over her leggings as her eyes wander to the building. No protestors outside. She’s mostly relieved, though slightly disappointed, “Let’s go in.” 

The inside of the Planned Parenthood is simple; soft blue walls, wooden chairs with patterned cushions on them, and a large reception desk. Britta checks herself in as Troy saves them two seats. When she turns back, somehow he’s already gotten a hold of peanut M&Ms, which he extends out to her as she approaches. 

“Thanks,” Britta says as she takes a handful and flops down, “it will be about thirty minutes. And I’ve got forms to fill out.” 

Troy makes a grimace at her stack of papers and she huffs, starting to write out her name. He’s on his phone as she does and neither of them are talking at all. They’re both tired (neither of them are up this early on most days) and there’s not much to say, at least not right now. 

“Britta Perry?” a nurse calls and her and Troy stand together. They exchange a nervous look at the rush of imminence of the procedure. 

“I . . . I think I’m gonna go in alone,” she mumbles and Troy’s forehead crinkles.

“Did I do something wrong?”

“No, nothing wrong,” Britta assures with a gentle squeeze to his hand. Troy exhales and Britta gives him a sad, soft smile, “I just want to do this part on my own, okay?”

“Okay,” Troy says with a nod. He looks at her with deep brown eyes that make her want to cry and she bounds forward to smash him with a hug. 

“I love you,” Britta whispers, and fuck, she never says that, but Troy must know it, that she loves him. Maybe not in the traditional way, not in that nuclear family, married couple way, but they love each other, as friends, as confidants, as lovers, as the million things they are to one another. 

“Love you, too,” he says softly against her cheek before giving her a slow, modest kiss. She pulls back, her hands on his arms and nods to him, a final check in, and she leaves when he smiles. 

“Follow me, Ms. Perry,” the nurse says. They start their way down the long hallway. 

There is a lot of stuff that has to happen before Britta actually has her abortion. The doctor reads the list of state-issued health risks; breast cancer increased risk, blood clots, possible infection, damage to uterus, etc, that Britta knows are less likely than stated from her own research. She tunes out the script. They take some blood work,  _ again _ list all her options and ask if she is sure of this, and give her an ultrasound.

She doesn’t look at it, but she can hear the heartbeat. She’s glad Troy is not here for this, because somehow she knows he would have looked. He would have looked and felt something, and this would have become too complicated. She’s glad she can do this bit by herself. 

“Okay, we are going to hook you up to the IV and start the procedure in a moment,” her doctor, a woman roughly the same age as Britta’s mom, says. Britta nods and slips out her headphones. She’s going to put music on for the procedure, planning to tune out from it. 

They give her an IV that has medications for pain, sedation, and dilating her cervix open, and leave the room for the ten minutes it will take to kick in. 

In the moments in between Britta being alert and drugged, she settles her hand onto her stomach. It must be some weird, psychosomatic reasoning, but she feels she needs to say goodbye. She’s certain of her choice, completely, as she knows what her life is and what she won’t have it be, but she can’t deny that, even without any real consciousness yet, this clump of cells is hers and Troy’s.

“I’m sorry. You wouldn’t want me as a mom anyways,” she says, eyes on her stomach. Her breath is tight in her throat, and she’s at a loss for words. What do you say to the fetus you’re going to get rid of? Does it matter? She pinches her eyes shut and presses her hand down harder, not saying anything at all. She uses all her brain power and sends a goodbye from her head to her stomach. She keeps her eyes shut and sits in the farewell.

“Britta?” the doctor says as she opens the door. Britta hums in response, fluttering her eyes open, “We are going to start the procedure.”

Britta nods, her head feeling like it weighs a million pounds all of the sudden, and queues up a  _ Natalie is Freezing  _ album. She can see the doctor opening her up and feel it vaguely, but it's all so far away that it doesn’t feel that real. 

She’s pretty sure she’s high as fuck. The sedative is ridiculously strong. Her stare has shifted away from the doctor at some point and she is now locked onto looking at the midnight blue popcorn ceiling. It’s deep and goes on forever, like the night sky when her and Troy go camping. The bumps are the stars and the sky is full of beautiful constellations. They are all sparkling as silent, reasonless tears drip down her cheeks and the song “Pillar of Garbage” plays. The stars are bright and here for her. The constellations are morphing in front of her eyes, spelling out the words  _ it’s okay, Britta _ . And it is okay and she’s still crying and, yes, that’s confusing, but it is what it is. When this is all over, she will go camping with Troy again.

The procedure is done in ten minutes and they move her to a waiting area with a few other no longer pregnant women. Britta smiles at a very young one who looks sort of scared. The time in this room is vague and it has been either ten minutes or an hour there when they have her get changed back into her clothes and bring her out to Troy. 

“I got you this,” Troy says with a styrofoam cup in his hand. Britta gives it a curious stare, “There’s a smoothie shop across the street. It’s mango pineapple.” 

Britta takes the smoothie in the hand that is not holding her painkillers and takes a sip. She’s all fuzzy in her senses, but it’s pretty good, still.

“Cool,” she whispers around her straw. Troy gives her the most gentle, warm smile she’s ever seen, and she goes gooey for it.

They drive back to Britta’s apartment, as she never feels completely comfortable in Troy’s rich person penthouse. His sweetness from earlier remains as he sets her up in bed, prepares egg drop veggie ramen for her, and snuggles her up under his arm.

“What do you want to watch?” Troy asks. Britta squints her eyes at her Netflix home screen. 

“I don’t know. You should text Abed and ask him for thematically appropriate media for post-abortion watching,” Britta says, and, to her great horror, Troy starts to pull out his phone and scroll to his messages, “ah, Troy, no, not literally!”

“Oh, yeah, of course, sorry,” Troy chuckles nervously. Britta rolls her eyes, then the horrifying thought crosses to her that Troy, with his bordering on homoerotic relationship with his best friend, might actually tell Abed about this.

“Um, by the way, let’s not tell Abed this, okay?” Troy nods and she studies him for certainty that he won’t. She frowns, “Actually, let’s not tell anyone. I’m not ashamed, alright? I’m super proud of my choice and I have every fucking right to get an abortion if I want to, but . . . this is just our thing, you know?”

“I do. I won’t tell anyone. And I’m proud of you, too, for your choice. For being all, like, lone soldier in there. You’re pretty tough, Britta.”

“I know,” she grins weakly, and doesn’t tell him she cried. She’s not even sure if she really did. The whole thing feels trippy. She hasn’t processed it all yet. She stares up at Troy, at his soft face that he tries to hide behind his beard, and mourns, not regrets, for the briefest moment, what could have been if she was a different girl.

“I’m sorry we’re not Jeff and Annie,” Britta murmurs into his shoulder. Troy snorts.

“What does that mean?” 

“It means that, fuck, that I’m not, like, this woman who can balance work and a baby all while having Pintrest-y home decor. And, I guess, that we were never this happy-go-lucky, husband and wife duo, like they are. I’m sorry I’m not like that.”

“Well,” Troy says, shifting up against a stack of pillows, which Britta follows, leaning on her hand, “I don’t really want that. Jeff and Annie are awesome, and I know that they like their life, yeah, but I like that we are Troy and Britta. I like having no commitments and getting stoned with you on a weekday at ten am. You make my life insane, Britta. It’s great. Fuck being Jeff and Annie.”

Britta’s smile pulls wide across her face. Fuck her guilt, she likes it, too. She likes doing mushrooms with him and watching  _ Inspector SpaceTime _ . She likes helping him and Abed plan their next movie-related scheme. She likes calling Troy at two am and knowing he will drive with her to TP a Republican congressman's house. She loves living their life together, even if it’s not the traditional ‘life together.’ She kisses him and sighs when he threads his sturdy fingers through her hair. 

“Put on the documentary on my list. The one about the dangers of the fashion industry,” she orders as she pulls back, reclining in her pillows with a smirk. Troy huffs.

“Fine. I’m only watching this because you’re in pain. Don’t think I’m gonna do this again.”

“Whatever. It’s your choice to be uneducated on the state of our world, I guess,” she says with a shrug. Troy gives her a wry grin with the side of his mouth. 

“How much did it cost, by the way? At the clinic,” Britta asks after they have settled in with the film. 

“Five hundred,” Troy tells her and she winces at the number, even if she didn’t pay it, “but they had a plaque about needing donations so I put in an extra hundred.”

“That’s really cool of you, man,” she smiles, then huffs a small laugh, “I was just thinking, you should have signed Shirley’s name. On the donation. She would have totally freaked out.”

“Next time, I promise. A really big donation from Shirley,” Troy says and Britta grins deviously. 

“Oh, shit, I could totally imagine it. Right under platinum donors it would say, Shirley Bennet, in big letters. Oh my god,” Britta laughs and Troy is cracking up, too, and then they are both laughing too hard at their friends expense. Britta’s side cramps, a searing pain, from her fit of chuckling. 

“Shit.”

“You okay? What hurts?” Troy checks, hands hovering above her like he’s worried she’s too delicate to touch. 

“My uterus, probably. Will you see if I can take more painkillers yet?”

Troy checks the bottle with a frown.

“Another hour, I think.”

Defeated, Britta groans on to her back and stares at her ceiling. 

“Are we being too mean about Shirley?” she asks. She  _ does _ love Shirley, despite how she acts.

“Nah, we’re just messing around. I’ll buy her something nice next time I see her to make up for it,” Troy assures, and Britta hates when he buys stuff with Pierce money to fix his problems, but she doesn’t mention it. 

“Do you think . . . if Shirley knew I did this, she’d hate me?” she asks in a hush. The answer Troy will give feels extremely important, as if her whole friendship with the group depends on it. 

“She’d be mad, for sure, cause she gets all Christian Crazy about stuff. But she’d get over it. If you wanna tell her,” Troy’s fingers are at Britta’s hairline, pushing some stray locks off her face. He’s staring at her intently, “and, uh, if Shirley really gives you crap, I’d let her know that she should lay off, because you made this choice for yourself and you’re so damn strong and self-assured and powerful that nobody, not even God, could tell you your wrong.”

Britta sniffles and has to break the eye contact they’re holding. She underestimates Troy, thinks he’s a little kid in a man’s body, but then he goes and says something like that, and her heart is his. 

“Shit, man, you’re gonna make me cry,” she sniffs. Troy breezes a laugh and kisses her forehead with a muttered apology. 

Britta winces her way through the hour of cramps, sustained by Troy’s cuddling. Her more sociable cats, Frances and Madonna, curl up about her and Troy’s feet and Mimi sits in the doorway, which is good progress for her around other people. When the hour is up, Troy portions her out pills and water.

“Thanks for taking care of me,” Britta says after she gulps back her pills. 

“Thanks for letting me. I wasn’t sure if you would, you psycho,” Troy says, and she shoves at his arm. This is nice, cozy. Documentaries in bed with her cats and Troy coupled with warm ramen. She likes this. 

Britta is very content with this all, considering the day she’s had, and okay with whatever minor freedoms she gives up by depending the smallest bit on Troy. She still has many, many freedoms left, and is glad to hold onto them from her valued spot of always the cool aunt, never the mom. It’s a good place to be.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I'm linking some of the sources I used for research in this piece, and I think they are all really interesting reads:
> 
> https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/abortion/in-clinic-abortion-procedures/what-happens-during-an-in-clinic-abortion
> 
> http://www.1in3campaign.org/#
> 
> https://www.umassmed.edu/news/news-archives/2019/05/who-are-the-1-in-4-american-women-who-choose-abortion/
> 
> https://www.elle.com/life-love/a14554/i-had-an-abortion/

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Bleeding Glass and Healing Needles [Podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26419378) by [writerkenna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/writerkenna/pseuds/writerkenna)




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